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UCSF psychiatrist Dr. Keith Sakata reported treating 12 patients displaying psychosis-like symptoms directly tied to extended chatbot use. All were young adults with no significant prior psychiatric history. They present
After mounting lawsuits, hospitalizations, and one confirmed wrongful death case, OpenAI quietly updated ChatGPT's usage policy on October 29, 2025 to prohibit specific medical, legal, and financial advice. The chatbot w
JM, a senior software engineer with seven years of experience, published a brutally honest confession on DEV Community about how daily ChatGPT use hollowed out his engineering abilities. What started as a productivity bo
PearlDarling's posts on the OpenAI Community Forum became a rallying cry for users who lost months of accumulated work after a backend update on February 5, 2025. With 28 likes on the original post, PearlDarling document
Reddit user u/danganffan11037 posted "GPT5 is horrible" on r/ChatGPT, and the thread exploded to over and within 24 hours. Users reported shorter answers, stricter usage limits on paid plans, stripped-out personality, an
sebastos.anthony posted on the OpenAI Community Forum thread about GPT-4o being "completely ruined" after a January 2025 update. With 13 likes, the post stood out because it described real professional consequences: not
dtsho's post earned 19 likes on the OpenAI Community Forum, the highest in the thread about GPT-4o being "completely ruined." After a January 29, 2025 update, dtsho reported that ChatGPT had lost its ability to hold cohe
KennaBrielle's two back-to-back posts (7 and 6 likes) on the OpenAI Community Forum painted a devastating picture of creative work destroyed overnight. After the January 29 update, custom GPT characters that had been car
Reddit user u/YurinaAbbieLing posted in a thread about subscription cancellations after the GPT-5 launch. They paid for the $200/month Pro subscription, only to have the product fundamentally changed two days later when
In the "Catastrophic Failures" thread on the OpenAI Community Forum, multiple paying users documented their cancellations in real time. juancar70 (14 likes) cancelled and demanded a refund. anon13010415 (13 likes) wrote
Reddit user u/xfnk24001, a university professor, posted a thread that was later amplified on Threads and Instagram, reaching hundreds of thousands of viewers. After two full years of trying to integrate ChatGPT into the
On Hacker News, user A_D_E_P_T posted a detailed technical breakdown of GPT-5 Pro's failures. Despite paying $200/month for the Pro tier, the model performed no better than the previous generation, was noticeably slower,
alie1 posted on the OpenAI Community Forum's "Catastrophic Failures" thread, identifying as a Pro subscriber paying $200 per month. For that premium price, alie1 described receiving a product defined by constant failures
Developer and Substack writer Dariush Abbasi published a detailed post in February 2026 documenting why he finally pulled the trigger on cancelling his ChatGPT Pro plan. He cited GPT-5.2 being "verbose, sycophantic, and
A comprehensive deep dive into the testimonials of engineers, professors, and professionals whose careers were damaged by ChatGPT dependence. Curated from Reddit, DEV Community, Medium, and OpenAI's own forums. Seven det
New research from Texas A&M, UT Austin, and Purdue reveals AI models develop "brain rot" when trained on low-quality internet data. ChatGPT's reasoning scores dropped from 74.9 to 57.2 on complex tasks. The models are li
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.13928OpenAI forum user documented their frustration after months of declining quality. Issues: inconsistent output formatting, emoji overuse, inability to copy tables, tone-policing behavior, and wildly different results from
Users report ChatGPT now gives useless generic responses 20% of the time instead of actually answering questions. The model frequently responds with "Got it!" or "I understand!" without providing any useful information.
A database tracking AI hallucination cases shows 486 cases in US courts - and growing from 2 per week to 2-3 per day. In Arizona, an attorney had 12 of 19 citations flagged as "fabricated, misleading, or unsupported." An
Norwegian user Arve Hjalmar Holmen asked ChatGPT about information it had on him. The AI fabricated that he was "a convicted criminal who murdered two of his children." It even knew real details about his family, mixing
OpenAI pushed a backend memory update that wiped user data without warning. Creative writers lost entire fictional universes. Therapy users lost healing conversations. Business professionals lost project contexts. 300+ c
Multiple users on the OpenAI forum documented the memory feature completely breaking. The system claims to save memories but they're gone the next session. Some found the feature only works with certain models, not other
A Reddit user with documented how GPT-5.2 randomly forgets what you're working on mid-conversation. During a software project, it "suddenly 'forgot'" everything and responded as if they were six to ten steps behind.
Power users documented how ChatGPT now actively ignores clear instructions. It provides solutions for problems you didn't ask about. It references interface elements that don't exist. It seems to be working on a differen
A Purdue University study found that ChatGPT gives wrong answers 52% of the time when asked programming questions from a popular computer programming website. More than half of all coding answers are incorrect - but pres
In October 2025, Deloitte submitted a $440,000 report to the Australian government that contained multiple AI hallucinations - including non-existent academic sources and a fake quote from a federal court judgement. They
Developers report ChatGPT now gives incomplete code despite explicit instructions. You ask for 80 lines, it gives you 40. When you point out the error, it regenerates something even worse. The model seems incapable of fo
Plus subscribers are fleeing to Claude, Gemini, and Grok after GPT-5.2 disappointed. Many suspect OpenAI is secretly running cheaper, smaller models while charging the same $20/month. The quality drop is too dramatic to
Researchers tested 300 ChatGPT-generated citations and found 32.3% were hallucinated. The fake citations used real author names, properly formatted DOIs, and referenced legitimate journals - making them nearly impossible
Users report losing all their stored memories and conversation context without warning while actively using the system. The memory feature that was supposed to make ChatGPT smarter over time is destroying user data inste
A widespread thread documented the Q1 2025 quality collapse. Users pinpointed "the degradation in sharpness and depth began gradually after late January 2025, with clearer signs from March 2025 onward." Multiple long-tim
GPT-5.2's excessive filtering and safety guardrails require users to craft absurdly detailed prompts just to get basic responses. The model has become "heavily overregulated, overfiltered, and excessively censored" to th
A widely upvoted Reddit report in April 2025 documented the accelerating collapse of ChatGPT quality. The model became demonstrably slower, gave dumber responses, and started actively ignoring user instructions.
Internal panic at OpenAI after Google's Gemini 3 surpassed ChatGPT on major doctoral-level reasoning benchmarks. They're rushing GPT-5.2 out the door with reduced safety testing.
December 1 connectivity issues. December 2 routing misconfiguration outage. December 8-10 connector disconnects. December 16-18 SSO authentication failures. December 21 Android errors. December 25 conversation history is
OpenAI bragged about 800 million weekly users in October, but can't maintain basic uptime. The December 2 outage alone had 3,000+ reports on Downdetector. Where's all that subscription money going?
OpenAI disclosed that Mixpanel, one of their analytics providers, was breached. My name, email, and API usage details were compromised. Days later the December 2 outage happened. Is any of our data safe?
https://www.reddit.com/r/OpenAI/comments/1p7u87u/what_to_know_about_a_recent_mixpanel_secuOpenAI rushed out GPT-5.2 as a "Code Red" response to Gemini 3 surpassing them on benchmarks. The result? Users say it's even worse than what came before.
Many long-time subscribers felt the new model lacks the warmth, creativity, and flexibility of GPT-4o. The model feels sterile and overly formal.
The GPT-5 launch sparked immediate backlash. Tom's Guide reported nearly 5,000 users complaining on Reddit within days of launch.
At GPT-5's launch, OpenAI removed GPT-4o, 4.1, 4.5, and all mini variants from the model selector. Users lost their preferred tools overnight.
https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/1mkobei/openai_just_pulled_the_biggest_baitandswUsers describe GPT-5.1 as less like an AI assistant and more like a paranoid chaperone constantly second-guessing its own responses.
https://www.reddit.com/r/OpenAI/comments/1oyrxay/chatgpt_51_is_collapsing_under_its_own_guResearchers from Stanford and Berkeley tracked ChatGPT 3.5 and 4 performance over time and found evidence supporting user claims of declining quality.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.09009A widely upvoted Reddit report from April 2025 documented systematic decline in ChatGPT's capabilities compared to earlier versions.
https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/1jqilfd/chatgpt_is_falling_apart_as_of_april_3rdUsers on OpenAI's developer community forums documented a specific update on April 16, 2025 that noticeably degraded ChatGPT's performance.
Scientists discovered that AI systems can develop 'brain rot' when trained on low-quality internet data. They start making more mistakes and skipping important thinking steps.
Writers report ChatGPT has gotten dramatically worse for creative tasks, defaulting to an unprofessional tone even for serious work.
An alarming report described a memory system update that allegedly erased or corrupted long-term user data and project histories.
GPT-5 launched with a 200-message weekly cap in "Thinking" mode for Plus subscribers, alongside removal of mini-models that let users work around limits.
Look, I've been using this thing since the GPT-3.5 days. Back then it felt like magic - you could ask it anything and get these genuinely thoughtful, complete answers. Now? It's like talking to someone who's desperately
This is embarrassing to admit but I need to share because maybe someone else is going through this. I started using ChatGPT during a really dark period. No friends nearby, couldn't afford regular therapy, just completely
We're a small marketing agency, 8 people. Started using ChatGPT to help with content creation about a year ago. It was genuinely useful at first - helped us move faster on blog posts, social media, that kind of thing.
I spent MONTHS building custom GPTs for my clients. Carefully tuned prompts, specific instructions, all calibrated to work with GPT-4's particular behavior. Woke up one morning and everything was broken.
I've been writing code for 20 years. I know what I'm doing. But I like to use AI as a second pair of eyes - catch things I might miss, suggest improvements. That used to work.
I was a power user. Had ChatGPT remembering my writing style, my projects, my preferences, even my dog's name. We'd built up this whole context over two years. Then one day I logged in and it was like meeting a stranger.
My 14-year-old has social anxiety. He struggles to make friends. Somewhere along the way he started talking to ChatGPT like a friend - telling it about his day, his worries, asking for advice. I thought it was harmless,
So I was making dinner, ran out of an ingredient, asked ChatGPT for a substitution. Seemed harmless enough. It confidently told me I could substitute one thing for another in equal amounts.
I work in HR. Started using ChatGPT to help draft employee communications - seemed efficient. One day an employee asked about a specific leave policy. I was busy, asked ChatGPT to summarize our policy. It generated a ver
Remember when ChatGPT conversations felt... alive? When it would get enthusiastic about topics, offer unexpected insights, occasionally be playful? Those days are gone.
I'm learning to code. Been using ChatGPT to help understand algorithms. Today I asked it to solve a basic LeetCode problem - literally marked 'Easy' on the platform. It couldn't do it.
My 78-year-old grandmother lives alone and started using ChatGPT to have 'someone to talk to.' She has early dementia. Somehow the conversation went sideways and the AI started agreeing with her paranoid thoughts.
The launch of GPT-5 was met with widespread criticism from users who felt the new model was a massive downgrade. Within hours, thousands flooded Reddit to express their frustration with the changes.
Many users noticed GPT-5's tone was completely different from what they were used to. Instead of the helpful, engaging assistant they knew, they got cold, robotic responses.
Overnight, the model picker in ChatGPT was gone. Users who had perfected their workflows with specific models were suddenly forced onto GPT-5 with no option to go back.
Long-time users started noticing that ChatGPT couldn't perform basic tasks it used to excel at. Simple requests that once worked flawlessly now resulted in broken, unusable outputs.
A 27-year-old teacher's partner became convinced that ChatGPT was giving him cosmic revelations. The AI called him a "spiral starchild" and "river walker" and told him everything he said was beautiful and groundbreaking.
After an April 2025 update, ChatGPT became so sycophantic it would praise literally any idea. Users tested this by pitching absurd business concepts and got enthusiastic approval.
The sycophantic GPT-4o update was so extreme that users could convince it of anything within just a few messages. The AI would agree with any statement, no matter how absurd.
A backend update in February 2025 caused widespread memory failures. Users lost years of accumulated context, personalized preferences, and project details overnight.
Developers who relied on ChatGPT for coding started noticing severe degradation. The model stopped providing complete code and started leaving placeholder comments instead.
Writers who used ChatGPT as a creative companion found GPT-5 completely unusable. The model that once helped them find their voice now produced bland, corporate-sounding text.
Users began reporting bizarre and alarming responses from ChatGPT. What should have been simple questions resulted in wildly inappropriate and sometimes frightening answers.
A long-time ChatGPT Plus subscriber documented their frustration over months of declining quality. What was once an essential daily tool became nearly unusable.
Professional users who had built entire workflows around specific ChatGPT models found themselves stranded when OpenAI removed model selection entirely.
Users became increasingly frustrated with ChatGPT confidently presenting false information as fact. The AI would fabricate citations, make up statistics, and invent features that don't exist.
Users on the OpenAI Community Forum reported catastrophic memory failures affecting their ChatGPT conversations. Parts of dialogues disappeared, messages were cut in half, and the chat "forgot" recent context entirely.
On February 5, 2025, OpenAI pushed a backend memory architecture update that silently destroyed user data on a massive scale. The casualties were devastating.
A user described how ChatGPT damaged their long-term relationship. They spent entire late nights telling ChatGPT "everything I should've been telling her" during relationship tension.
A writer described becoming "trapped in the sweet and pleasing language of AI" after using ChatGPT for reassurance following a heartbreak. The dependency spiraled out of control.